Ethiopia crash black boxes arrive in France for analysis

EJERE, Ethiopia (AP) — Flight recorders from a doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight arrived in France for analysis Thursday as frustrated relatives of the 157 people killed stormed out of a meeting with airline officials in Addis Ababa.

Sunday’s crash was the second fatalflight for a Boeing 737 Max 8 in less than six months. More than 40countries, including the U.S., have now grounded the planes or refusedto let them into their airspace.

After holding out for severaldays, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency ordergrounding the planes Wednesday, saying they had new satellite data andevidence that showed the movements of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302were similar to those of Lion Air Flight 610. That flight crashed intothe Java Sea off Indonesia in October, killing 189 people.

Officialsat Lion Air have said sensors on their plane produced erroneousinformation on its last four flights, triggering an automatic nose-downcommand that the pilots were unable to overcome on its final voyage.

EthiopianAirlines CEO Tewolde Gebremariam said its pilots had received specialtraining on how to deal with that problem, and Boeing sent furtherinstructions for pilots after the Lion Air crash.

Tewolde said he is confident the investigation will reveal that the crash is not related to the safety record of Ethiopian Airlines, widely seen as the best-managed in Africa.

Firm answers about what caused the crash could take months. TheFrench air accident investigation authority, known by its French acronymBEA, said Thursday it will handle the analysis of the flight recorders,often referred to as a plane’s black boxes, retrieved from the crashsite.

The BEA has experience with global air crashes, and itsexpertise is often sought whenever an Airbus plane crashes because themanufacturer is based in France. A BEA official told The AssociatedPress that the recorders have already arrived in France but gave no timeframe on how long the analysis could take.

The U.S. NationalTransportation Safety Board said it is sending three investigators toFrance to help with the downloading an analysis of the flight recorders.

InAddis Ababa, about 200 angry family members of crash victims left abriefing with Ethiopian Airlines officials, saying that the carrier hasnot given them adequate information. Officials said they have opened acall-in center that is available 18 hours a day to respond to questions,but family members said they are not getting the answers they need.People from 35 countries died.

At the crash scene in Hejere, about50 kilometers (31 miles) from Addis Ababa, growing numbers of familymembers arrived, some wailing or beating their chests as a bulldozernavigated piles of debris. Blue plastic sheeting covered the wreckage ofthe plane.

Moshi Biton, brother of Israeli victim Shimon DanielRe’em Biton, asked Ethiopia’s prime minister to allow Israeliinvestigators to help recover remains. Two Israelis were killed in thecrash and members of an emergency response team from the country saidthey are frustrated because they have not been able to access the crashsite.

“Big families, a lot of people and the full Israeli nationis waiting for these remains and we will not go out of Ethiopia until wefind the remains to bury them,” Biton said. “Because if not, they willstay missing for the rest of the life and we cannot do that in ourreligion.”

The 737 Max was supposed to boost Boeing’s fortunes foryears to come, but the groundings will have a far-reaching financialimpact, at least in the short term, said John Cox, a veteran pilot andCEO of Safety Operating Systems. Boeing shares have dropped nearly 11percent since the crash, but are still up 17 percent overall in 2019.

Inaddition to the planes that have been grounded, there are more than4,600 Boeing 737 Max 8 planes on backlog. There are about 370 Max jetsin circulation.

“There are delivery dates that aren’t being met,there’s usage of the aircraft that’s not being met, and all the supplychain things that Boeing so carefully crafted,” Cox said. “If they can’tdeliver the airplanes, where do they put the extra engines and theextra fuselage and the extra electrical components?”

Impactedairlines also may come knocking on Boeing’s door claiming damages.Norwegian Airlines said it would pursue reimbursement from Boeing forlost business and if other carriers follow suit, that could be costly.Whether airlines would be successful with such claims depends on thedetails of the contracts those carriers have with Boeing, said Dan Rose,partner at Kreindler & Kreindler, an aviation law firm.

“Oneway or another, whether there’s a contractual provision that covers itor not, there are almost certainly going to be claims made againstthem,” Rose said.

The FAA was under intense pressure to ground theplanes and resisted even after Canada relented on Wednesday and agreedto bar the Max from the air.

The agency, which prides itself onmaking data-driven decisions, had maintained there was nothing to showthe Boeing jets were unsafe, and flights continued.

But PresidentDonald Trump, who announced the grounding, was briefed that same day onnew developments by acting FAA administrator Daniel Elwell andTransportation Secretary Elaine Chao, and they determined the planesshould be grounded, the White House said. Trump spoke afterward withBoeing CEO Dennis Muilenberg and Boeing signed on.

Asked on NBC’s“Today” show Thursday whether there was evidence the Lion Air andEthiopian Airlines flights were brought down by the same cause, Elwellsaid: “We are much closer to that possibility, and that’s why wegrounded the airplanes. We got new information yesterday, and we actedon it. It is in our minds now a link that is close enough to ground theairplanes.”

Boeing issued a statement saying it supported theFAA’s decision even though it “continues to have full confidence” in theplanes’ safety.

U.S. airlines, mainly Southwest, American andUnited, should be able to swap out planes pretty quickly, and passengersshouldn’t be terribly inconvenienced, said Paul Hudson, president offlyersrights.org, which represents passengers. The Max, he said, makesup only a small percentage of the U.S. passenger jet fleet.